


in the name of

by orphan_account



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Gen, Identity Issues, Polish National Team
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-10 01:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3271172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bogusław is three years old when his parents put all his toys into a box and the view from his bedroom window no longer provides a horizon to his tiny world. </p>
<p>(or how Eugen Polanski grows up not quite sure as to who he is.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	in the name of

Bogusław is three years old when his parents put all his toys into a box and the view from his bedroom window no longer provides a horizon to his tiny world. He cries and chews on his fingers the entire way from Sosnowiec to Viersen while his sister plays with her dolls beside him. 

There is no easy way to tell a child that their name is no longer theirs. Bogusław doesn't want to be Eugen but there's nothing he can do because his name doesn't exist in this strange new world where the people speak in a foreign tongue. 

Years later, Eugen is thankful for everything that Germany has given him, but he will never forgive her for taking his name from him. 

Eugen is eight when he joins Borussia Mönchengladbach and hits another kid for making fun of his second name. He's an angry kid with his mother's short temper and blue eyes, but he's not the only one with a Polish surname in his class. His teachers and parents tell him it's wrong to hit people but Eugen thinks it's worse to make fun of people because they are different. 

By the time he's a teenager, Poland is a faint but ever-present smudge on the blackboard of his mind. He still visits his grandparents when Christmas comes around but their conversations become shorter, simpler as the years pass. Sometimes he forgets everything and sits quietly in the corner with his sister who doesn't play with silly little dolls anymore.

In true teenage fashion, he becomes self-conscious about it. He's not ashamed of where he comes from but -- 

One night he finds a photograph. He's a baby in his mother's arms, his sister is on his father's shoulders and they are all dressed up in their Sunday best. They stand outside a grey, simple-looking tower block that Eugen recalls was his home once. Casting a glance out to the garden in which his father still  practices his free-kicks with him, Eugen wonders what he used to miss about Sosnowiec so much. 

When he's sixteen he gets his girlfriend Karolina pregnant and he's pretty sure that makes him a bad Catholic. When he's seventeen he holds his baby boy - Tim, they decide, because that can't be lost in translation - to his chest and he falls in love. 

No matter how much he promises he will, he can't protect Tim from everything; not from the teeth that break through his gums, or the grazes on his knees, or the cold that keeps him up sneezing through the night. Karolina touches his arm sometimes, says he's doing a good job despite everything. Eugen looks down at her - she's so tired, he can tell - and thinks about asking her if this is how she planned things -- but that would be stupid because of course she didn't. He kisses her instead.

His grandparents call to ask him when Tim is getting baptized, when he's planning on marrying Karolina and why his son doesn't have a good, Polish name. Eugen can hardly answer any of them because he just can't remember how. He hangs up the phone prematurely when he can offer nothing but silence. 

Then Germany make him captain at the Under-21 Euros (Eugen doesn't feel very Polish as he sings the German national anthem, word perfect, armband hugging his bicep tight) and his son is already three years old. Time flies, scarily quick, and Eugen is left grabbing onto the coattails of a youth spent lurching from one improbable situation to another. He reads bedtime stories to Tim while his other teammates his age are out drinking, dancing, having sex with pretty girls. Eugen doesn't know if he's into that sort of thing but it doesn't really matter because it's never going to be an option anyway. 

And they all lived happily ever after. For a while. 

Eugen grows his hair out long, moves to Spain, gets a tattoo of rosary beads on his shoulder, has another son. Spanish doesn't sound as scary as German used to, but it's as foreign as Polish is becoming. Eugen doesn't talk to his parents or his sister as much as he should anymore. 

In Spain the call him El Alemán and the conformation is as nice as the paella. Eugen reclines in the Madrid sunshine safe in the knowledge that he finally knows who and what he is. 

That's why, when Poland call, he says no. It's not easy but Germans shouldn't play for Poland. Eugen supports Germany at the World Cup and moves back home that summer. 

Eugen knows he's backtracking, but he makes up some bullshit about feeling red and white in his veins but insists he is still German. If he's not playing for Poland against Germany, he won't support them, he tells the media because he at least wants to try to be remotely honest. Some fans say they're going to boo him but they can hurl as many insults at him as they like because he probably won't even understand. (Only he does, subconsciously, when the time comes.) 

It's easy because Sebastian is like him but it's not easier because he insists on pretending to be something that he isn't. Sebastian slaves over a German-Polish dictionary when they're shut up in a room together and Eugen thinks it's verging on pathetic of him to care about fitting in so much. But Sebastian insists on learning, learning, learning until he can glide through a press conference with relative ease and then - then he sings the national anthem and Eugen sticks out like a sore thumb as his lips stay tightly pressed together. 

Eugen can't help but feel his grandparents are looking down on him, disappointed. 

Robert Lewandowski doesn't make it any easier because his broad shoulders and blue eyes send Eugen into a different identity crisis. Eugen doesn't like men but he thinks he might like Robert. He doesn't do anything about it because he has a ring on his fingers and he's already pissed off God enough to warrant a lifetime in purgatory for his sins -- but that doesn't mean Eugen doesn't think about him. Thinks about how he'd have him. How it would feel. 

Eugen gets a tattoo of a crucified angel on his back but he's not entirely sure why. There's a lot of things that Eugen isn't sure about, though. 

Euro 2012 is a disaster but Eugen doesn't cry over it. Sebastian does but Eugen knows not everyone is the same. It is like, somehow, Sebastian Pniowski has been reborn and Bogusław Polański has long since been lost to the air. Robert cries, too, in private because he's not as invincible here as he is in Dortmund. Eugen doesn't even pretend to feel sorry for him. 

Eugen is twenty-eight years old when he quits the national team and watches his Germany win the World Cup. He's sick and tired of pretending to be someone that he hasn't been since he was three years old. 

**Author's Note:**

> \- Eugen Polanski was born Bogusław Eugeniusz Polański. There is no German equivalent to Bogusław so upon his arrival in Germany, he was registered using the equivalent of his middle name.   
> \- Polanski has two sons. Tim (b. 2003) and Luca (b. 2008).   
> \- He played for Borussia Monchengladbach from between 1994 to 2008. Since then he has played for Getafe, Mainz 05 and 1899 Hoffenheim.  
> \- In 2010 he turned down an offer from Poland manager Franciszek Smuda saying, 'I know I can have a place in his team during Euro 2012 but I’m more interested in fighting for a place in a better team [German National Team]’  
> \- Polanski made his Poland debut August 2011.   
> \- In May 2014, he announced he was quitting the Polish National Team. 
> 
> In the past I've criticised Polanski because I don't think he's been entirely respectful in the way he has approached playing for Poland, but I don't think I've ever taken the time to understand how he might actually feel. Although my situation is slightly different because I was born in the country my parents immigrated to, I can empathise with him. Now I'm hoping he has a change of heart and comes back.


End file.
